1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an operation control apparatus for an electric bed, which controls the lift-up and lift-down operation of a back bottom of a bed for a medical use or a nursing care use, the lift-up and lift-down operation of a knee bottom of the bed and the lift-up and lift-down operation of the whole bed.
2. Description of the Related Art
Beds for a medical use or a nursing care use are designed to be able to change the tilt angles of the back bottom and knee bottom of each bed or change the height of the frame of the bed so as to change the posture of the patient and the overall height of the bed, for the need of a treatment or care or in order to keep or improve the degree of independency of a person of advanced years or a disabled person.
In case of a home bed, particularly, a patient or a caretaker operates a switch on a remote control unit to lift up the back bottom and the knee bottom, lift up the frame, or lift down the back bottom and the knee bottom, lift down the frame, thereby adjusting the back angle and the knee angle or adjusting the overall height of the bed. In this case, the use conditions vary according to the environment and there is a possibility that various problems occur. Such a trouble may cause abnormality in the bed. While a caretaker or a patient operating the remote control unit, however, the caretaker or patient cannot clearly detect what has happened immediately before the occurrence of abnormality. Even when a service engineer diagnoses the electric bed after the occurrence of abnormality, therefore, it is often the case that the engineer does not find the cause of the abnormality and takes time in repair.
Under the nursing care insurance system, a care manager who creates a care plan for a person of advanced years cannot know how the person of advanced years is using an electric bed introduced according to the care plan and cannot verify if the care plan prepared himself or herself is adequate.
When some sort of trouble occurs in an electric bed, the situations before and after the trouble cannot be known, disabling the investigation of the cause of the trouble.
An operation control system for an electric bed equipped with an operation recording function has been proposed (see, for example, Japanese Patent No. 2865161). This system accumulates and records the operation time and the number of operations for each bed and ensure reading of those records to perform a maintenance of the bed, but is not useful in investigating the cause of abnormality and examination of the optimal care plan.